One of the most expensive and most important activities in a project involving modification of an environment (e.g., the building of roads, plants, industries, hydraulic enterprises, sanitary landfills, etc.) is the evaluation of the project's environmental impact.
Local legislation sets forth the minimum set of technical activities to be carried out during the environmental impact study. These prominently include the characterization of the environmental state or situation of the area, before implementing the project and the consideration of the biological medium and the natural ecosystems. An environmental impact study explores and studies the fauna and the flora of an area, particularly the species that are indicative of the environmental quality, of scientific and economic value, rare, and threatened with extinction, and identifies permanent conservation areas.
Therefore, it is extremely important to build tools that help the process of characterizing the flora systems in the regions of operation.
One factor which influences the cost of an environmental impact study, particularly the activity to identify the species of plants present in a certain cluster, is the route or path required to collect samples of these plants. A cluster of plants may cover an extensive area and access thereto may include obstacles, such as rivers, mountains, etc. Problems with itinerary and identifying the minimal paths have been investigated and applied in different areas [Solomon, 1987; Youssef et al., 2002; Pisinger & Ropke, 2007] (e.g., in motor car GPS appliances, for example, the driver receives suggestions of the quickest routes taking into account his current location and his destination). Similarly, the use of leaf images as a morphological tool to automate plant identification processes has been studied (Brill, 1968; Silva, 1996; Marine, 2000). However, in non-urban environments (such as forests) there are not always roads connecting the various points to be covered or researched and oftentimes there are obstacles which hinder the path.
Therefore, there is a further need for a system and method that generates routes to clusters of plants based on important factors such as the need to collect a variety of samples, time, effort, costs and risks related to consideration of the biological medium and the natural ecosystems.